Sunday, January 3, 2010

Quilt blocks started by my grandmother more than 50 years ago provided entertainment for our New Year's weekend family gathering. My mother, 86 years old and still actively quilting, helped me and daughter Angela arrange them on the design wall.

Daughter Angela and Jerrod have been visiting from Austin, TX, over the holidays. My SIL Judy gave Angela a package of unfinished quilt blocks as a present.

These blocks were started back in the fifties and sixties by my grandmother in southern Utah. She used many fabrics from her scrapbag so some pieces date back to the twenties and thirties. All the diamond stars are sewed together, but only about half of them have the background set in squares and triangles hand stitched.

We arranged them on the design wall, added blue sashing, and sat down together to hand stitch enough blocks to complete the top.

I have always avoided learning quilting handwork, but finally my grandmother who has been gone since 1976, was guiding me and my daughter to learn the fun of setting in background squares. We only needed to do one block apiece to have enough. Then there are about 24 more stars which will be made into 2 twin size tops in the future. Angela took the almost completed top back to Texas along with some yellow border fabric and a wool bat contributed by my mom. We'll work on it again next time we get together.

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Growing up in the fifties I learned crochet, sewing, and knitting.
In the sixties I got my degree in psychology and education, married, and worked as counselor and disability specialist for social security. I did macrame, hairpin lace and broomstick lace on my noon breaks.
In the seventies and eighties, I took classes in weaving, spinning, and dyeing, I raised two beautiful kids and I became a certified master gardener.
Through the nineties I learned batik and silk painting. I took drawing lessons and saw my kids off to college.
My brother and his wife, Judy, moved close to us. Judy needed a studio to pursue her painting so in 1999 we bought a hundred year old brick building on main street and opened the Art and Antique Gallery.
We gutted, restored, painted, and polished and our building is now on the National Register of Historic Places. With the millennium, I started journaling. I traveled to Italy, Greece, Austria, France, and England. My brother and I studied lampworking and I began designing jewelry.
I continue to learn something new every day. It is a beautiful life.